A little scavaging for wire behind the old service station and field repairing the vapor speedo is a breeze

Mid day route briefing

No hassles yet today

This stretch before Happy Valley was the most difficult sustained riding of the trip for me. It seemed like it would never end and I'm thinking LDF would agree with me.

These green bits were all about faith in solid ground. I knew why they were green...and there was some water in places but was I blindly riding into quicksand?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DR. Rock

The next couple of hours, were spent essentially bushwhacking, following a line on a GPS,
which every once in awhile would reconstitute on the ground into something that resembled the idea of a road...
but more often than not, remained a road only in theory.

When I first noted the round barn on the map when I was creating the route, I thought it was some kind of novelty tourist attraction, like the worlds largest ball of twine.

but in fact, it was an impressive accomplishment of pioneer ingenuity and engineering.

Of course, LDF was obsessing over this animal track which she was convinced was from a beast spawned by the crossing of a mountain lion with a bear with a wolf.

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

or so to The Narrows... and we were feeling much better after our stop with Mr. Jenkins. Here's my recap:

"Stop looking at me like that!" I don't know why, but the cows were creeping me out.

It was some nice trail to get to the Refuge. You can see the wetlands in the distance.

The last bit was paved,

and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say we weren't a little disappointed when we saw what our camping opportunity would be:

an RV parking lot, a grassy knoll, no fire pits, no view... sigh. We gassed up, bought some appetizers and cocktail fixin's at the gift shop,

and set up our tents.

The good news is that there were hot showers. Or showers, anyway... the one Dave had was curtailed, but the stall LDF used never ended, all off of one quarter. I chose that one. We had a nice dinner in the restaurant, and a small campfire in a fire bowl made from an old washing machine inner drum with legs welded onto it.

After the day we'd had, no one was complaining.

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

Today our route would continue west, possibly to Christmas Valley, or if we made good time, we'd skip that and just press on to Silver Lake where we'd been before on the TAT. We'd only be crossing one paved road in between, Hwy 395, not that there would be any services.

I'd traced most of the route on GoogleEarth, with the exception of a couple dry lake beds where the tracks sort of dispersed. Otherwise, I had the usual anxiety of getting turned around by gates and such. And I could in no way vouch for the difficulty of the terrain. Turns out, we didn't have a single reroute the whole day.

We awoke to overcast skies, and a few sprinkles.

We started with a short paved transit section that took us out on the Double O Ranch road.

Through the refuge,

where we actually did see some birds,

I don't know why the birders get their undies bunched about motorcycles... we flush 'em out so they can log them in their little books. They should be thanking us.

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

beyond which was who knows what. We made our contributions to the wetlands,

performed one last pre-flight check,

and pointed ourselves at the first dry lake bed crossing.

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

Past the rise, there were a couple more lake beds, but they were more sandy.

Overall this section was visually striking, and I think the overcast weather and clouds contributed a lot to that.

Climbing out of that valley, we were on vague cow trails again (OK Mr. Jenkins, "roads")

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

or maybe we were now acclimated so that mildly challenging, difficult terrain now seemed easy.

Looking back,

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

Riding away from this spot for a good five minutes and turning back yielded this view. We took our break where the road meets the canyon:

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space

__________________"I came into this game for the action, the excitement; go anywhere, travel light... get in, get out... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form." --Robert De Niro as Archibald 'Harry' Tuttle in Brazil, 1985. The Mobius Tripindex | Spot tracking live 4/18-5/4/13 | AdventureLoft™ Tent Space